


Ain't No Valley Low Enough

by SylvanWitch



Series: Ain't No Mountain High Enough [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Domestic Avengers, M/M, not-a-shovel-talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2019-01-23 06:03:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12500456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: Thor's understandable cultural confusion leads to some unexpected revelations for Steve.  Or, Nat is a BAMF! friend and Pepper kicks EQ ass.  Or something.





	Ain't No Valley Low Enough

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this and all stories in this series are taken from Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's terrific "Ain't No Mountain High Enough."

It had been going better than Steve had expected it would until the kitchen caught fire.

 

Two weeks after Steve and Tony didn’t break up, a fragile détente holding the team together and Steve walking on eggshells every time he had to make a command decision, Tony had suggested a dinner party—“Nothing too fabulous, just immediate friends and family, some bread, some wine, some thou.”

 

Nat had agreed to strong-arm a still-ambivalent Clint into coming, and Bruce had volunteered to cook.  Thor was in from Asgard, Ms. Potts had had a rare free evening, and it had all seemed to be destined to succeed.

 

Until Steve had—in all innocence—brushed the back of his hand across Tony’s ass while passing between him and the open fridge door, and Clint had made a comment about getting a room, and Tony had responded by pointing out that all of the rooms were his, including the kitchen, which is why he and Steve had christened the breakfast counter only that morning, and then Clint had leapt acrobatically (and entirely too dramatically) off of the stool on which he’d been sitting at said bar, and jostled Bruce, who’d been in the process of transferring a pan full of sautéed okra from the stovetop to the counter.

 

And then Jarvis had engaged the Decentralized Instant Airborne Fire-retarding system (“DIAF, Tony, really?” Ms. Potts had said).

 

So now they were lounging around the dry part of the living area in various states of damp undress eating takeout directly from the cardboard boxes with plastic chopsticks.

 

It was about par for the course, Steve guessed.

 

“Let us have a toast to your plighting of the troth!” Thor exclaimed, gesturing athletically with his chopsticks and thereby spraying everyone around him with sweet and sour sauce.

 

“Oh, we’re not—,” Steve began, hoping to head this one off.

 

“We’re definitely not,” Tony added unhelpfully.

 

“You are not beloved of one another?”  Thor was understandably confused, and for a beat everyone looked at Bruce, who usually waded in to referee these cultural misunderstandings.

 

“They are,” Ms. Potts said warmly, smiling at Thor but quite noticeably not looking at either of the lovebirds in question.  “They just haven’t exchanged promises.”

 

“Actually, Pepp,” Tony started, and Natasha stood up abruptly, saying “Dessert?” with unnecessary saccharine and giving Tony a pointed look as she passed him on the way to the triple chocolate torte Pepper had brought.

 

With no discernible signal, the living room cleared out, as if it took a god, a crack-shot archer, a sometimes-Hulk, and the world’s deadliest yenta to cut a torte.

Tony was the last to go, dragging his feet like a reluctant child put to bed before the grown-ups went home, until Natasha peeked her head around the doorframe at him with a look that would freeze Jotunheim, and he got with the program.

 

“Subtle,” Ms. Potts said.

 

Steve felt a flutter of nerves in his stomach and gave her an uncertain smile.

 

“Save the Boy Scout charm for Tony,” she said then, getting up and crossing the room to where Steve was sitting on the floor, propped against an overstuffed leather chair Tony had been lounging in.  “That’s not why I’m here.”

 

She moved with impressive grace for a woman in a borrowed pair of Bruce’s sweats, which bagged at the ankles, and a black _Property of S.H.I.E.L.D._ tank-top that Barton had loaned her.

 

Even with her pink lacy bra straps showing, she looked both sophisticated and terrifying.

 

Steve swallowed a last bite of moo shu pork and sat up straighter as she folded herself into the chair behind him.

 

He sat perfectly still, fighting the urge to look over his shoulder at her and feeling the hair at his nape stand on end. 

 

“You can relax, Captain.  I don’t bite.”

 

That’s not what he’d heard, an observation Steve kept very much to himself.

 

“And this isn’t the part of the evening where I threaten you with bodily harm if you break Tony’s heart.”

 

Despite the words themselves, her tone did nothing to ease his sense of dread.

 

“In fact, I’m here to warn you about Tony mistreating you.”

 

At this, Steve did look at her.  “Tony doesn’t—.”

 

“Did I give you permission to speak, Captain?”

 

He shut up.

 

“I get it, okay?  You’re enormous and strong and mostly indestructible.  You’ve survived a war and an alien invasion and Bruce’s more inventive cooking. You’ve suffered terrible loss and come through it.  I understand all of that.  But when it comes to intimate relationships, you’re not very experienced, and when it comes to _Tony_ , even expert neuroses-wranglers have a hard time getting through to him.”

 

While she spoke, Steve’s heart had begun a trip-hammer thumping so that he’d thought she’d be able to hear it, close as she was.  At her last observation, however, he couldn’t help but smile, a small, tentative thing that was met, thankfully, by her knowing grin.

 

“I know you love him, and I can see how he looks at you, Captain.  He loves you in a way he’s never loved anyone, I think—and it terrifies him.  And you’ve probably noticed by now that when Tony’s scared, he gets…”

 

She paused as if trying to think of the right word.

 

“Dickish,” Steve supplied, borrowing one of Clint’s favorite words for Tony.  Then he blushed, ducking his head and mumbling, “Sorry, Ms. Potts.”

 

Her peal of laughter, musical and rich, startled him into grinning, and for a moment they shared a look of mutual ruefulness over Tony’s recalcitrant nature.

 

“That’s a good word for it,” she agreed.  “And please, call me Pepper.”

 

“Only if you’ll call me Steve.”

 

“That’s a deal, Steve.”

 

They spent a companionable moment letting the air between them grow a little warmer.  Steve felt some of the tension easing out of his shoulders, and he pivoted on his hip to look more directly at Pepper.

 

“Can I ask you something about when—” and then he thought better of finishing his question.  It wasn’t his place to ask personal questions, and things were only just starting to go well between them. 

 

“Ask me anything, Steve.  It’s why I arranged with Natasha to find us a few minutes alone together.”

 

Steve took a second to reflect that if the Avengers as a whole had the single-minded focus of Nat and Pepper, the villains of the universe would quail to enter Earth’s atmosphere.

 

 “I get why Tony pretends not to care about something when that something is threatened in some way.  And I understand why he runs himself down sometimes, though I hate it when he does that.”

 

Pepper nodded feelingly in agreement.

 

“But do you know what his deal is with Howard?  We can’t talk about it.  Whenever I’ve tried to bring it up, Tony gets cold and distant, like he’s seeing things a thousand miles away.  And then he’s strange and quiet with me for hours afterward, and Tony quiet is really…”  He struggled to find the word.

“Unnatural,” Pepper supplied.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“I can understand why you’re asking me, Steve, but I don’t think it’s my place to tell you the story.  Or the parts of it I know, anyway.  What I can tell you is that Tony’s ghosts are probably more real even than yours.  With his memory, he can’t let go of anything; it’s all there, catalogued and waiting for something to remind him—a woman’s perfume, a certain song played on a piano, the texture of a silk tie, the taste of French champagne.”

 

She shook her head, her eyes cloudy with the past.  At last she visibly shook herself and gave Steve a level, appraising look.  “If you’d like my advice?”

 

“Please,” he said, and he hoped he didn’t sound too desperate.

 

“Let him go.  When Tony’s caught up in a memory, let him live through it again, and then be there when he comes back to you, glad that he did.”

 

“Half a Tony is better than none, huh?”

 

Pepper shrugged elegantly.  “For what it’s worth, I think you’re getting more of Tony than anyone ever has.  There are just parts of him he can’t share—not now, and maybe not ever.  I threw myself at that blank wall for a long time before I figured out that I was only hurting myself.  When Tony’s caught up in something from his past, he’s impervious to further injury.”

 

Steve nodded again and said softly, “He’s hurting too much to feel anything else.”

 

“It’s hard loving him,” Pepper said, as though agreeing with something Steve hadn’t said.

 

“But worth it.”  There was no uncertainty in his voice, no softness now.  Loving Tony wasn’t a trial or a punishment.  It was a gift. 

 

Pepper smiled a small, sad smile.  “I’m happy for you both, Steve, but especially for Tony.  Maybe it takes someone with super-strength to bring him out of his fugues, I don’t know.  What I do know is that I wasn’t strong enough.”  She looked suddenly tired and vulnerable, not at all the Ms. Potts he’d come to know and fear.

 

“I know we don’t know each other all that well, Pepper, but I do know that you’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever met.  I’m not sure it’s strength that’ll help here.  It might just be…”  It was his turn to shrug, unsure of how to put into words something he’d only just recognized he was feeling.

 

“Patience?” she offered.

 

He smiled.  “Stubbornness.”

 

“Persistence?”

 

Smile widening into something wicked, reminiscent of the man they both loved, Steve said, “Stamina.”

 

Pepper threw her head back and laughed, a loud, inelegant, raucous sound that brought Natasha in from the kitchen.  She was holding a plate with a slice of torte in one hand and a chocolate-smeared carving knife in the other.

 

She looked like she could kill Steve with either object.

 

Pepper, still chortling, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes, held up a hand to ward Natasha off.

 

“It’s okay.  We’re good.  You can come back in,” she managed between strangled giggles.

 

Steve winked, mouthed _thank you_ , and gestured her to bring over the dessert.

 

The others filed in one by one, Tony last, trailing behind the rest with his eyes half-closed, as if afraid to witness whatever carnage he might find in his living room.

 

What he got instead was an unlikely tableau—Steve sharing a slice of torte with Pepper, heads together, whispering and casting occasional, surreptitious glances in Tony’s direction.  They were discussing the things Tony loved in his most secret and geekish of hearts, things that were endearing without being childish—things that Tony would kill them for repeating to anyone else.

 

“If you’re exchanging sex tips…” Tony tried, but Steve only caught his eye and held it, shaking his head in a tiny, forestalling gesture.

 

Tony surrendered gracelessly, putting his hands up and throwing himself down between Nat and Bruce on the big white leather sectional that dominated most of the room.

 

“This is all your fault,” he said to Nat, but there wasn’t much venom in it.  
  


  
“I know,” she answered, gloating evident in her voice.

 

Tony sighed theatrically and stole a fingerful of chocolate from Bruce’s plate.

 

“I think we’ve made Tony suffer long enough, don’t you?” Pepper murmured at last, offering Steve the last bite of the torte, which he gallantly refused, giving her back the fork.

 

He smiled, leaned up to kiss her on the cheek, and then rose to cross the room and stand in front of his man. 

 

“What?” Tony asked, looking peevishly at Steve and licking the last of Bruce’s torte off of his fingers.

 

Steve held out his hand, saying nothing, until Tony took it.

 

“What?” Tony said again, this time with more suspicion in it, taking Steve’s hand and letting Steve pull him to his feet.

 

“I believe that in Thor’s tradition, when a couple plights their troth, they retire to privacy to get to know one another better.  Isn’t that right, Thor?”

 

“Indeed, Captain, it is among the most celebrated of our traditions.  Of course, you must select your witness.”

 

Tony’s sinful smile told Steve that he’d just walked into a trap of his own making.  He didn’t think he needed Bruce to translate this particular cultural tradition for him.

 

“Uh…” he argued eloquently.

 

“I vote Pepper,” Tony said, smile widening to something truly infernal.

 

“In your dreams,” Pepper answered.

 

“Maybe.”

 

“I think we’ll forgo the witness in this case, Thor.  Earthlings are a little more…circumspect…in their, uh, intimate habits.”  This was, naturally, Bruce’s contribution.

 

“That’s not what my fair Jane has told me,” Thor began, and then it was Nat’s turn to intervene.

 

“Jane probably thought you should keep that to yourself,” she observed, rising from the couch and shooing Steve and Tony toward the hallway that led to Tony’s private suite.

 

“So, I’m confused,” Clint could be heard behind them as they moved hand in hand away from their gathered friends.  “Are they engaged or something?”

 

“Or something,” Pepper answered, and Steve was gratified to feel Tony squeezing his hand.  When he stole a look at him, Steve saw that Tony was smiling, that gentler, warmer expression he seemed to reserve only for Steve.

 

Steve answered Tony’s squeeze by putting his own back to Tony’s suite door and pulling Tony hard against him, lowering his head for a long, slow, wet kiss that had as much to do with plighting their troth as claiming Tony—snark and wickedness and brilliance and broken places—for his own.

 

Catcalls and suggestions for anatomically improbable activities barely cut through the blood thunder roused by Steve’s racing heart, and when he broke the kiss it was to laugh against Tony’s mouth and then press the words “I love you” against the strong column of his throat.

 

“God, get inside before I do you right here,” Tony groaned, shoving ineffectually at Steve’s chest.

 

“I think Clint would have a coronary.”

 

“Bonus,” Tony crowed, but he didn’t mean it, and when they at last were alone in the quiet of Tony’s rooms, he tugged on Steve’s hand to stop his steady progress toward the bedroom.

 

Lifting the hand—his left hand—to his mouth, Tony planted a kiss on Steve’s ring finger. 

 

“Just because—” Tony started, but Steve cut him off.

 

“I know.”

 

“It’s not that—”

 

“I know that too.”

 

“Okay, as long as you do.”

 

“I do,” Steve answered.

 

He did.  He _really_ did.

 


End file.
